Israel Eyes the Turmoil and Keeps Silent

Few Middle Eastern states besides Syria have a greater stake in Lebanon’s ongoing tumult than Israel, its neighbor to the south. And few have more reason to keep their opinions to themselves.

As a series of dramatic events has roiled Lebanon for the last five weeks, from the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to massive, unprecedented street demonstrations and stop-and-go political realignments, Israel has for the most part been uncharacteristically silent.

That is because senior Israeli officials are well aware that publicly championing a particular outcome, such as a full withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and an end to Syria’s longtime domination of Lebanese political life, would only discredit the views of Lebanese who feel the same way.

In this part of the world, the perception of a too-close alliance with Israel is a dangerous taint for Arab leaders and popular movements alike. That remains true despite the recent warming of relations between Israel and the new Palestinian government.

“Very simply, Israel shouldn’t speak about Lebanon,” said Ephraim Sneh of the left-leaning Labor Party, a former deputy defense minister who is now a lawmaker. “We should be vigilant, we should be alert, we should be in a state of full readiness against all possible threats -- but we shouldn’t speak.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, not always the most adroit of diplomats, was unceremoniously shushed last month when he gave a series of high-profile speeches and interviews calling on the international community to pressure Syria to get out of Lebanon.

Israeli officials confirmed that the Bush administration had urged them to curb such statements.

Even without U.S. admonitions, Israel’s long and complicated history of entanglement in Lebanon is seen by many here as reason for proceeding with extreme caution.

Israeli troops withdrew from a “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon in May 2000, ending a military presence in the country that had lasted nearly two decades.

The guerrillas of Hezbollah, an Iranian- and Syrian-backed Shiite Muslim militia, proclaimed themselves Arab heroes who had driven out Israel’s powerful army.

Israel insists it left Lebanon of its own volition, but many in the country’s military establishment believe the spectacle of a hasty Israeli departure emboldened the Palestinians to launch their intifada, or uprising, less than half a year later.

“The last time we tried to shape the situation in Lebanon, the outcome was not very successful,” said Sneh, a former Israeli army general who, like most military men of his generation, served a long stint in Lebanon.

Today, Hezbollah is a political and social force to be reckoned with in Lebanon, able to marshal half a million protesters to counter opposition demands for a Syrian pullout.

But an upset in the balance of power in Lebanon may raise more problems than opportunities for the group, Israeli analysts believe.

Israel would like to see Syrian forces leave Lebanon, several senior Israeli officials say -- a switch from an informal stance dating to the 1980s.

Until recently, Israel’s view was that Syria’s presence was odious but an important stabilizing factor.

With Syria as the undisputed power broker in Lebanon, Israel could threaten to strike on Syrian soil whenever Hezbollah seemed poised to get out of hand, on the grounds that the Damascus government bore ultimate responsibility. The phrase most commonly invoked by Israeli strategists to describe it was “We have an address” -- that is, a clearly defined target for any retaliatory measures deemed necessary.

Now, though, “that paradigm has fundamentally changed,” said a senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The understanding was that the Syria occupation would promote the status quo,” the official said. “But today, the status quo is a dangerous one.”

Hezbollah is seen as a prime would-be spoiler of any movement toward resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Israeli authorities believe that over the last month or more, it has redoubled efforts to “subcontract” attacks inside Israel by Palestinian militants.

However, Hezbollah is also believed to have supported, at least tacitly, a conditional agreement last week by Palestinian militant groups to extend an informal hiatus on attacks against Israel.

Occasional border skirmishes with Hezbollah guerrillas are viewed mainly as a nuisance by the much stronger Israeli army. But Israel nonetheless considers Hezbollah a greater strategic threat than West Bank- and Gaza Strip-based Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. That is primarily because Hezbollah possesses an arsenal of some 10,000 rockets and missiles, according to Israeli intelligence, including some long-range projectiles that could reach northern Israeli communities, including Haifa and Tiberias.

In recent months, Hezbollah has for the first time obtained aerial drones from Iran, and rattled the vastly technologically superior Israeli air force by sending one of the aircraft undetected into Israeli airspace.

Israel’s army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, said this month that a Syrian pullback could encourage Hezbollah to step up border attacks against Israel in a bid to bolster its domestic standing.

Still, Israeli officials are quietly pleased to see Hezbollah having to swim against a tide of popular Lebanese sentiment favoring a Syrian withdrawal. They think the group’s image as a patriotic defender of Lebanon is at risk.

“Something that weakens Hezbollah in the long run improves Israel’s strategic position,” said Eyal Zisser, a Tel Aviv University analyst.

Israel, Washington’s biggest ally in the Middle East, has as a matter of course supported President Bush’s calls for greater democratization in Arab states with autocratic regimes. But Israeli commentators have taken a highly skeptical view of prospects for real social and political change in Lebanon or elsewhere in the Arab world.

“At first glance, this seems to be a ‘velvet revolution’ similar to the earthquake that shook Eastern Europe in 1989, with the people bringing down a tyrannical government,” prominent security analyst Guy Bechor wrote in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot.

“But one needs to bear in mind that the pro-Syrian regime in Lebanon is still intact.... One must not succumb to the temptation to believe in Middle Eastern-style ploys of deception.”

Israel would welcome a centralized Lebanese government strong enough to assert control in the Shiite-dominated south, where Hezbollah has established a virtual state-within-a-state with Syria’s blessing. Though Hezbollah is likely to remain the dominant force in that region, Israel believes that even a token Lebanese military presence along the border could help keep tensions in check.

Syria’s military presence in Lebanon aside, Israel still has serious points of friction with the Damascus government, chief among them the harboring of exiled leaders of groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Israel holds Syria accountable for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last month, because the Damascus-based leadership of Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israel sees events in Lebanon as having no bearing on the decades-old quarrel over Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, over which Israel and Syria technically remain at war. Israeli officials and analysts recognize, however, that the international community might reward Syria for a withdrawal from Lebanon by putting pressure on Israel to open talks over the strategic plateau.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has rebuffed a few tentative overtures by Syria in the last year, saying there is no reason to believe that President Bashar Assad is sincere about wanting a comprehensive peace.

In the late 1990s, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak sought to open a dialogue. But Syria set what the Israelis considered an unrealistic condition for talks: a guaranteed return of the entire Golan.

Negotiations never got off the ground, and Sharon remains deeply mistrustful of the Damascus government.

Israel has cautiously raised the topic of eventual friendlier relations with Lebanon, and the economic benefits they could entail, if and when Syria’s influence on the country diminishes.

“It’s possible that when the Syrians are no longer in Lebanon it will be possible to resume the dialogue with the Lebanese, who in principle have no conflict with us,” said Tzachi Hanegbi, a minister without portfolio in the Sharon government.

But Zisser, the Tel Aviv University analyst, said it would be unwise to assume that Lebanon would normalize relations with Israel any time soon, even if it gained a measure of independence from Syria.

“This is a deeply, deeply polarized society,” he said. “On the one hand, you have a Christian minority that is pro-Western, open and liberal, and on the other hand segments of society that are not at all pro-Western, very anti-American ... and of course anti-Israeli.”